Sunday, November 16, 2014

Today's Jack Kelly column - "Jack Kelly / VOTE FRAUD IS NOT IMAGINARY Yet Democrats keep trying to dismiss it" relies fairly heavily on a study that was published in the Washington Post about non-citizen's voting. I, as one might guess, copied his snarky style in my comment to point out that this study is one of a kind, and relies on data even one or the studies authors admits is fairly suspect. Here is my comment, copied from the PG comment section of Kelly's column (with a little editing).

If you Google "Jesse Richman and David Earnest:, you will indeed find the Washington Post piece where there talk about their findings. You will also find, a few items down, a fact checking piece from the Reno Gazette-Journal on those findings. That Reno piece discusses how various researchers have questioned Mr Richman's and Mr Earnest's study, and indeed how even Mr Richman concedes the data set is not very good. For example it turns out that people who responded in a similar study who listed themselves as non-citizens had in prior years called themselves citizens. The fact checking article gave the study a four out of ten, and Richman agreed with that rating.

That was Jack Kelly's smoking gun. He could have mentioned the doubts about the research, not to mention pointing out this was the only study of its type, but he chose to make his own assertions and accusations. I read at least once about some state out west where Republican local election officials were throwing out absentee ballots from Democratic voters, and the Republican Secretary of State in that state declined to investigate (even though it was caught on film). But Jack Kelly couldn't be bothered to look into that.

Mr Kelly quotes "a friend in Chicago" as hard evidence of vote fraud. But the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania could not come up with even one allegation, let alone any convictions for vote fraud in the last ten years in Pennsylvania (when it was defending it's new voter ID law in the State Supreme Court, a case it lost). Just because Republicans/Conservatives scream over and over again about something, that repetition does not make it true.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Jack Kelly today finally talks about the income gap with "Jack Kelly / Obama’s Raw Deal Oligarchs benefit as the middle class lags". However, as Mr Kelly gets into it, he immediately reverts to form and suggests that Obama'a most important policies are somehow the very ones benefiting the wealthy when in fact they are the ones which particularly benefit the poor and middle class. Kelly goes on to this incredibly hypotritical attack on wealthy Democrats, as if somehow they don't deserve their money.

As I often do, I commented on Mr Kelly's column. My comments are below:

Mr Kelly talks about how President Obama's hypocritical remarks can not be topped, yet Mr Kelly then goes on to make some incredibly hypocritical remarks himself.

Yes, Jack Kelly has finally decided to notice that the Obama administration has been pretty good to Wall Street. Paul Krugman, Glenn Greenwald, Robert Reich, Elizabeth Warren and others have been saying that for years (watch Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job" and note the date ... or don't and stay in your bubble) and wonder where conservatives like Jack Kelly have been. When Mr Kelly provides us with *policies* he identifies as helping Wall Street and/or wealth Democrats, he mentions the stimulus, the ACA and Obama's blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline. These are patently ridiculous examples, and show that Mr Kelly real concern is with making the poor even poorer (and wrecking the environment).

The interesting thing is that after so many conservative commenters and Republican politicians have screeched that Democrats/liberals engage in class warfare, Mr Kelly proceeded to imply that liberal millionaires don't deserve their money. Mr Kelly follows the footsteps of Pat Buchanan, who in 1996 ran for President partly using income inequality as part of his shtick. We should all know exactly how well that worked out. Now, too, Mr Kelly does get some numbers right, but mostly seems small and petty. Mr Kelly mentions the difference in middle class contributions to the national economy between 1970 and 2012. I assume that was inadvertent since it was Reagan who many economists credit with starting the increase in the rate of the income gap, and starting the stagnation of middle class wage stagnation at the median.

I think most Democrats would agree with Cornell West that there is a problem here, and those who have been talking about it for years are glad national attention is being focused on it. However, we also know that Mr *Obama* himself is also not wrong about the consequences of the Republicans taking control of the Senate. and finally we know that while Obama is responsible for the lack of prosecution of Wall Street bankers, Republican obstructionism is also primarily responsible for the growing income gap.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Today's Jack Kelly column, Jack Kelly / Poking the hornet’s nest: Half measures won’t defeat the Islamic State is interesting in that it re-examines Kelly's view on the the Vietnam war, a war he fought in as a young man. Kelly comes back to some of his favorite themes (if one can judge by how often he brings them up), that the US military could have "won" the war if it had been let off it's leash, and that Congress betrayed the Vietnamese people by not preventing the fall of Saigon a couple of years after we had left.

I have to give Kelly this: do I think he is correct that the US military was capable of so devastating the North Vietnamese military such that it would be incapable of launching any sustained military campaign in the South? The answer is yes. In fact, to some extent that is pretty much what we did in Korea a decade or so prior; after suffering an initial defeat, we were able to drive the North Koreans back. Then the Chinese intervened and the Korean "police action" entered a new phase. Would Chinese intervention have happened in the sixties and seventies if we had let the US military annihilate the North Vietnamese military? The fact that Vietnam had several low intensity border skirmishes with China in the late seventies makes that somewhat questionable, but pre "Nixon goes to China" ... who knows?

Kelly's point with today's column is that he believes once again, the US military could accomplish the particular mission of destroying ISIS if they were given a free hand. I will say that in this instance, given those parameters, I think Jack Kelly is right.

But I think that just defeating ISIS is not, and should not be, a foreign policy in and of itself. I guess Jack Kelly thinks that if you beat the tar out of what is supposed to be a tough opponent, all the other potential opponents will respect you. But I don't think that is necessarily the case. I don't think Saudi Arabia or Nigeria is going to sell us oil cheaper if we beat the tar out of ISIS. In fact, I suspect Saudi Arabia might start jacking up the price of oil, expelling US military personnel and generally siding with the people who don't like us if we thoroughly beat ISIS. Because if we do, I think it will create a whole new recruiting campaign for radical Muslims, who will want to blow up US targets yes, but also targets in countries that are our allies such as Saudi Arabia. Because even if we do beat the snot out of ISIS, it is not clear we will act that decisively towards the next threat, whomever they may be.

I did comment on the PG website, on the page of today's Jack Kelly column. I leave it to you whether you think I covered any or all of these themes. My comment follows:

More often than not, the key to understanding foreign policy is to look at the domestic situation. President Obama's seeming half measures are what he thinks the American public is willing to accept as reasonable action right now. Are they sufficient to achieve the goal of "degrading" the forces of the Islamic State such that other nation's ground forces can deal with them? I don't know, that depends on a lot of factors I don't know about.

But past that are bigger questions like what we hope to achieve with our foreign policy actions in general. Do we want to go to full blown war against IS? If the answer to that question is yes, then I also ask *why*? Do we think that killing thousands over there will make us safer at home? How many of those thousands we would kill would have come across the Atlantic to commit acts of terror here? And then the question is how many might come over to avenge the thousands of martyrs we would end up creating if we go to full blown war again in Iraq and apparently also Syria? We might try to remember the destruction in our country 19 men created in September of 2001.

Yes, we could have won Vietnam militarily. But what would that have accomplished geo-politically? Vietnam was not about a communist take over of the world any more than Iraq (II) was about keeping WMD's from being used by terrorists. But those two illusions killed thousands and tens of thousands of Americans. When do we start learning lessons that don't involve the deaths of American soldiers?

The subtitle of this column is "They’re lying about GOP foreign policy ". Where? Where is there any mention of "GOP Foreign Policy"? The bit about Rumsfeld? He wasn't setting GOP foreign policy, he himself had an idea for the occupation which was voted down by the then Republican President, George Bush (or Dick Cheney or Colin Powell or whomever, just not by a liberal/Democrat).

Seriously, does Jack Kelly understand how nonsensical that subtitle is?

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Jack Kelly continues (from last Sunday) his criticism of Barack Obama's current Iraq policy: Jack Kelly: The Islamic State attacks while Obama dithers: The president still doesn’t understand the terrorist threat. Now I don't specifically say Kelly is wrong about a need to get involved in this conflict, or that a consequence of not doing so could affect oil prices; in fact I don;t deal with those issues in the kind of depth they would really need. I simply point out we have a big level of responsibility for creating the circumstances for this situation (predating Obama) and oil prices may go up no matter what we do. Below is the comment I left on the PG website.

Is this situation perhaps what a seemingly prophetic Colin Powell had in mind when he invoked the (so-called) Pottery Barn "rule" before we invaded Iraq in 2003? ("You break it, you bought it") I don't think Americans want to permanently occupy Iraq, nor do the oil producing states of the region want us there for the next fifty or a hundred years, or even one year more. It is certainly true that oil speculators and traders could use the actions of this Islamic State to drive up the international price of oil, but that can happen for almost any reason, including our re-occupying Iraq.

It is true that we may well need to re-engage in Iraq to prevent a disaster, but doing so will not vindicate the various militarists on the right. It will be a further indictment of the Bush administration when he ignored the Pottery Barn rule of all our behalf's.

Sunday, August 03, 2014

Jack Kelly today dons his Rabbi shawl, and reminds us the Jews are the one true chosen people - "Jack Kelly: Satan supports HamasHamas targets civilians while Israel tries to protect them.". This kind of editorial is the kind of thing that essentially says unless you agree with anything and everything we say, then you are a mixture of an Islamic zealot an a Nazi (and Kelly once again brings up how Hitler, all by himself, created the Islamic Brotherhood). The Amnesty International report I reference in my comment to Kelly column, by comparison, is a nice balance of appropriate condemnation of both sides. Here is my comment.

I didn't know that the Post Gazette had decided to declare Judaism as the one true religion, or does Jack Kelly think that Judaism and Christianity are compatible, and the Jews are just a little confused? Meanwhile, he is telling the Muslim world, as well as the Hindu, Buddhists, all other religions, atheists and agnostics where they will go when they die and apparently how worthless they are when they are alive.

I mean, I am no supporter of Hamas, but that doesn't mean I have to accept everything Israel does and embrace biblical prophecies if I reject Hamas and their methods. The despicable nature of Hamas's *documented* activities is quite clear, however the zeal of Israel and it's supporters may well have led them to exaggerate some of what Hamas has done, and in fact the zeal of at least some Israelis in carrying out their individual missions, and perhaps even the mission as whole, have been questioned by entities such as Amnesty International.

Of course, people can always express opinions about Amnesty International and it motives. But the opinions expressed by conservatives about Amnesty and about my comment with also be read by independent readers (and voters), who will consider them in forming their opinions.

I suppose this is supposed to be a populist thing, but I find Kelly blaming all of our economic ills on regulations, with no better than a partisan jab at the increasing income gap, to be entirely unconvincing. Below is the comment I made on the online PG.

Jack Kelly fails to name one example of a regulation he would see eliminated. That in and of itself should raise red flags.

In the last thirty five or so years, there has been steady and even somewhat spectacular productivity growth. But wages at the median, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated. Women have gone to work, families have maxed out first credit cards and then the excess value in their homes in an effort to keep up a middle class standard of living and now those who still have jobs after the great recession started on President's Bush's watch are cutting way back on spending. That strikes me as equally or maybe a more plausible explanation for the slow down in the economy as regulations. But the question is why wages are not keeping pace with increases in productivity, why the increases are going almost entirely to the people at the top, why the wealth is not, as conservatives/Republicans repeatedly reference, "trickling down".

Conservatives only bring this issue up during the Presidency of a Democrat, and always act as if it started at the beginning of the Democrats Presidency. In Obama's case, George Bush left him a ruined economy, totally mishandled by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress of January 2003 to December of 2006. The current gridlock caused by Republicans in Congress has stymied all efforts to improve the economy.

Blaming regulations for problems started in the Reagan administration with anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-union and anti-middle class policies that were all designed to concentrate income and wealth in the hands of the 1% is the height of disingenuous commentary. .

Sunday, July 06, 2014

So today Jack Kelly is still on the populist horse, with this column "Jack Kelly / Regulations for the rich Crony capitalism infects Washington, especially Democrats" He points out all sorts of shifty things Democrats do, and I have to say I don't think he is wrong, at least about a lot of them. Still, I think there remains ideological difference between the parties. Now, are the Democrats as agressive about going after Wall Street as I would like? Nope, but they do still vote to keep food stamps (usually) and for women's reproductive rights (unless they are Catholic or some such thing). It's a pain being a liberal Democrat in this day and age, but it would be more embarrassing to be Republican. Here's my comment about Mr Kelly's column, first published on the PG online.

OK, first of all, the funny thing is how conservatives go from calling Democrats wannabe Communists and/or Socialists (If Socialism can be stretched to include Social Security and/or Medicare as socialist programs, then the word is becoming nearly meaningless) to "Crony Capitalists". I thought Democrats hate capitalism, according to conservatives and Republicans.

But I will say on one line of thought, I actually agree with Jack Kelly. The Democrats are pretty corrupt now. I mean, conservatives thought they caught Harry Reid red-handed in something with the Cliven Bundy thing (and solar somethings, yada yada). Of course they didn't, but I will say they did shed some (more) light on Reid's corrupt escapades in Nevada. And as far as I can see Nancy Pelosi and the majority of other Democrats in Congress are much the same as Reid, to varying degrees.

The thing, in this regard I see no reason to think Congressional Republicans are any better than Democrats. If I am being honest, I believe the number of relatively uncorrupted members of Congress from either party is probably in the single digits. I think that is an unpleasant fact of life we have to deal with.

That said, I will that the difference between the parties that I see is that Democrats of all stripes and ethical inclinations can be persuaded to come together to vote for measures that protect and aid the poor and disenfranchised. Now, that use to be true of some more moderate members of the Republican party as well, but seemingly that ended maybe 35 years or more ago.

See, I could respect the Tea Party as a movement. If the rural poor don't want government aid, I am sure some accommodation could be made. But if Tea Party members really are poor, there is not much that can be done for them in terms of the federal income tax, they probably aren't paying it and in fact are probably getting refunds. So the Taxed Enough Already thing doesn't apply to them, at least on the federal level.

And if the Tea Party people are middle class or rich, what are you complaining about? Living in this country has been good to you. You are pretending you are suffering, while the unemployed and poor in this country really are suffering? This faux populism thing is just kind of insulting to the real poor.

A few months or more ago I raised, on these comment threads, a particular issue about Benghazi (or more accurately repeated that others has raised it); I asked about what the CIA's role in the whole thing was. To a person, conservatives here on these threads accused me of trying to protect a lying President by distracting from those lies. Then today I read this in Jack Kelly's column: "We don’t know what CIA operatives at the Benghazi annex were doing. We do know extraordinary measures have been taken to keep them from talking about it."

Sorry Jack, you are how many yeas too late to the party. The Obama administration got the guy responsible for Benghazi. If you want to say that he could tell conservatives about the Obama administration doing an "ran-Contra scandal on steroids" but you don't think it will happen unless he is released into the custody of Fox News, you go right on and say that.

Apparently he will be a defendant in an ordinary criminal trial, so what he says will be a matter a public record. Now why we couldn't have captured rather than executed bin Laden and done this is beyond me, but this time the Obama administration is trying something new. So I am sure Khattala will have the opportunity to chat bout "ran-Contra scandal on steroids" if he so chooses.

Past my initial comment is a "lively" back and forth between me and a conservative commenter.

Monday, June 16, 2014

UPDATE 6/16/14: All of the long comments (including mine) criticizing this Sunday's Jack Kelly column have disappeared from the PG site. This doesn't happen with Reg Henry, Dan Simpson or Tony Norman. My only assumption has to be that Jack Kelly himself ordered them removed. How incredibly insecure the man must be to not be able to face any criticism

Sunday, June 15, 2014

UPDATE 6/16/14: All of the long comments (including mine) criticizing Jack Kelly have disappeared from the PG site. This doesn't happen with Reg Henry, Dan Simpson or Tony Norman. My only assumption has to be that Jack Kelly himself ordered them removed. How incredibly insecure the man must be to not be able to face any criticism.

So today Jack Kelly ruminates about the Brat win/Cantor loss Jack Kelly: Cantor ran to serve the elites - Dave Brat’s populist message may scare Hillary. It is an interesting topic, but what I find even more interesting is the Kelly embraces an anti big business spin. How long does he think th e Tea Party would survive he their billionaire sponsors abandoned them? But of course I am just jesting, the billionaires and the Tea Party love each other, and the billionaires think it is cute when the Tea Party rails against them. Below is a comment I posted on the PG website:

This column is an interesting swerve into fantasy land for Jack Kelly. He is, as ever, always willing to sing the praises of the latest flash in the pan for conservatives/the Tea Party, and there is a long list. Michael Steele, Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin (ever his favorite), and more recently Allan West and Ben Carson. I am surprised Kelly didn't suggest a Presidential run for David Brat yet.

But I expect that the fact Brat is an economics professor totally (if only secretly) delights Tea Party members and their slavish supporters like Kelly. I mean, among the Tea Party's principles is a rejection of any sort of expert.. but they mean the other experts. It's OK as long as their expert says the right things (an unregulated free market doesn't need a minimum wage, oh and by the way illegal immigration depresses the wages of actual Americans - I paraphrase his remarks). If he admires Ayn Rand and copies Ludwig Von Mies, he is in. As ever, it doesn't matter if reality backs up Dr Brat's remarks, there will always be some data that can and already has been distorted to produce a study or two to support his ideas, and other pet economists to oppose the sea of howls of derision from the mainstream. And Jack Kelly will be there to unquestioningly repeat Brat's rhetoric.

To me the really interesting thing is Kelly's brief attack on big business. Back in the nineties Pat Buchanan tried a similar thing, tapping into rural populist anger before the Tea Party was a gleam in the Koch brothers eyes. During another Democrat's Presidency (to the extent Clinton was not a DINO) Buchanan went after (believe it or not) income inequality. This surprisingly anti-big business (at its core) message garnered some support, although the culmination of Buchanan's efforts might have been his position on Florida's infamous "butterfly" ballot in 2000, where even Buchanan admits he siphoned off some of Gore's votes.

It is just funny how Republicans know they can "say" anything they want and still take big business for granted. It that respect (alone) I can see a comparison between a naive Jefferson Smith (Jimmy Stewart) and David Brat. As one junior member in the House of Representatives, he can say anything he wants, but will be unable to get any legislation passed (not even for Virginia land for the "Boy Rangers" or for legislation on shutting down immigration). The one percent will encourage his rhetoric, even as it encourages conservatives to say the majority of the one percent is made up of athletes and Hollywood. They get a laugh out of that in the club every time.

The irony of this column is that Jack Kelly may not be wrong about the Democrats taking a pounding in the coming midterms, but it has little to do with any failings of the ACA. The irony is that Republicans/conservatives are really good at appearing to be victims of a vast left wing conspiracy that of course does not exist. But there is a solid fraction of the population that always loves a good conspiracy theory, and of course also the huge majority of the population that doesn't care about politics (and doesn't read Jack Kelly), but can be scared into voting certain ways.

The reason this is ironic is that Jack Kelly constantly talks about how ALL the media is liberal and in bed with the Democrats, faithfully reporting everything the Democrats want them to verbatim. Actually, the media pretty much reports most things most politicians (whether Democrat or Republican) say. but the news media is good at sniffing out more sensational stories. Stories about how SNAP (food stamps) is helping keep people from going hungry are nice and worth a few seconds on the TV news. but stories of food stamp fraud will play so much better, just like stories of investigations into murdered diplomats (how high does it go? Who knew what and when? Were they watching the murders on TX?) and stories of how the government health program is killing people will get so many more viewers. And it is pretty obvious no proof is needed, as long as there is an accusation from a Congress person, it will make the air.

All these accusations of welfare and healthcare fraud and abuse that we hear now, does anyone ever wonder why we didn't hear them from January of 2001 through December of 2008? Sorry, I guess that is a rhetorical question.

But the fact is that Republicans/conservatives are far better at getting their stories out into both the conservative and the mainstream media. Even the liberal media (such as it is) dutifully reports on conservative stories, if only to pick them apart.

We all know that 85% of us are covered by health insurance at work, so the stories of skyrocketing premiums are only about the remaining 15%. Yes, some corporations with lots of minimum wage employees are cutting hours to avoid insuring their employees, but rather than blame the greed of the companies and their stock holders (who are overwhelming part of the 1%), Republicans screech that this is the fault of the ACA (and the media dutifully repeats every word). But the scope of the individual market for healthcare is relatively small, yet again Republicans are able to frighten huge masses of voters into thinking the ACA is going to take away their employer provided health care.

I keep reading conservatives saying that the United States is being destroyed by Barack Obama, and giving us all these untrue reason why. Perhaps the United States is being destroyed, but I think it is because of all the conservative lies that permeate the media.

It is funny to see Jack Kelly play economist. I personally am constantly attacked if I try to introduce the least amount of economic ideas into the discussions here, yet I see none of the conservatives who attack me here, attacking Mr Kelly. I guess IOKIYAC.

Kelly makes this assertion un-sourced "Enrollments fell 29 percent in January from December, with the pace of signups slowing as the month wore on." Why should we trust that statement? Kelly misidentified Larry Kocot as "of the Brookings Institution" when in fact he is a visiting fellow. In fact Mr Kocot was a senior adviser on Medicare in the bush Health & Human Services department. There is valid reason to think he has a political agenda.

Jack Kelly says about Grady Means "Mr. Means isn’t a doomsayer who’s predicted 11 of the last two recessions. He isn’t trying to sell gold, silver or freeze-dried food." I don't exactly see anything that contradicts that statement on the web, although Mr Means himself wrote essentially this same column right before the Presidential election in 2012. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/25/us-economy-on-schedule-to-crash-march-2014/?page=all . Breitbart (the pillar of journalistic integrity) has since picked up Mr Means predictions. And actually the most amusing thing is that after Mr Kelly exonerates Mr Means, he references two quotes from "Trends Research Institute founder Gerald Celente". There are many who would say that Gerald Celente predicted 11 of the last two recessions, ABC News and future editor of the New York Times Magazine Hugo Lindgren among them. In fact, Mr Lindgren is credited with coining the term "doomsday porn" to describe Mr Celente (among others).

You know, if Jack Kelly turns out to be right, then he (or Grady Means) will have pulled off the greatest prediction in history of predictions (well, maybe second to Dr Michael Burry, if Michael Lewis is to be believed). But I, for one, am not going to run off to rural Montana and invest in shotgun shells and freeze dried food.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

On the advice of Pod Camp, I will say nothing of my absence on this blog. I will say tax season is in full swing, but I am still commenting furiously on the PG, when I see something comment worthy. And today I decided to go "old school", and revive my blog posts of my PG comments on Jack Kelly columns. So....

This would be exciting if it were any kind of new and significant find. However it is an issue that economists have already acknowledged, but say will not bring about the apocalypse. In general, they say, the positive effects of the ACA (increasing access to healthcare for the poor, allowing some with multiple jobs to drop one job because they would have independent access to health care) outweighs the negative effects of not taking on additional income because of drops in *all* subsidies or aid to the poor.

And by the way, the poor almost never have the option, on any given day, or either accepting a significant raise or taking a better job. Any conservative who says the poor would rather stay lazy that accept a high paying job because they will lose the food stamps, section 8, Obamacare and Obamaphone is doing no more than repeating the latest Fox News "let's whip up our base into a frenzy". The way the "undeserving, lazy" poor can increase their income is if the take a second job, work 60-70 hours a week.

So as I say, this issue has already been addressed by economists who have already studied the issue.